I’ve seen reports of a Justice League of America movie in the works on a couple of sites, and frankly was surprised not to see a thread about it here. What’s your thoughts, oh Teeming Millions?
I’m okay with the idea, but I’d rather see a World’s Finest movie first, crossing the casts of the recent Superman and Batman movies, with the larger cast coming later. The success of the Bruce Timm DCAU 'toons shows me the value of building and respecting continuity with characters like these and I don’t quite see the Christian Bale Batman as a team player. He’ll have to start slow.
Or they could just build on the Smallville characters (Clark Kent, plus the series versions of Cyborg, Aquaman, Flash, Green Arrow, etc.), waiting a year after that show’s cancellation, with a major plot point being the discovery of a lost island of Amazons and the addition of a young but very hot and tall Wonder Woman. Superheroes have a pantheon-like mythology to them. These wholly independent “episodes” (like Marvel’s Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Hulk, X-Men, Daredevil and Ghost Rider movies) deprive themselves of a major aspect of comic-book fiction - that the heroes belong to a noble brotherhood of sorts. Marvel, in my opinion, made a mistake in not trying to tie their movies together. I don’t want DC to do the same. When George Clooney’s Batman made a flippant reference to Superman in his movie, it wasn’t clear if he was referring to someone who (in his universe) was real or fictional. I was genuinely hoping for the former, but then Clooney’s movie sucked rocks, so it was all moot.
For a related concept, I cannot more highly recommend Grayson and the “making of” video. Earlier discussion.
It would be interesting. As the article said, both Brandon Routh and Christian Bale are contracted to appear in a Superman vs. Batman movie, should one come about. I don’t know if they could be persuaded to appear in a JLA movie, however, and I don’t see that Warner Bros. would want to confuse movie-goers by casting other actors for the parts. And the script would need to give enough screen time to the core characters; J’onn J’onzz, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Flash, Hawkman, Aquaman. You’re probably not going to see secondary heroes such as the Elongated Man or Booster Gold. But with the right script, a JLA movie might be pretty decent.
I’m not so sure a Batman/Superman film would work. In comics, the general idea seems to be that they’re equal-ish; Superman is just incredibly powerful, while Batman is fantastically smart, trained, and equipped. The Batman of the current films is still just starting out; he only has one of those things, and even then they’ve been downplaying that. I think it would turn into “Superman and sidekick” or they’d have to give Bats a huge deus ex machina just to make him a believably similar.
Or involve kryptonite. It’s worked about 500 times already in the comics - why mess with success?
I had read (in EW) that the plot is going to be taken from the OMAC Project (Note: If you’re not familiar with that series, and don’t want to be spoiled, don’t follow the link!). I wonder how they’re going to handle
Wonder Woman killing Maxwell Lord,
considering how the majority of the population still sees Lynda Carter and the age of superhero innocence when they think “Wonder Woman”.